


you'll feel like an islander (ships will be reminders)

by MeansToOffend (goodmorning)



Series: Pick Me Up (Again) [9]
Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: 2018-2019 NHL Season, John Tavares is only in this by omission, New York Islanders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-26
Updated: 2019-02-26
Packaged: 2019-11-06 01:21:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17930078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodmorning/pseuds/MeansToOffend
Summary: "There's a hole in the room."





	you'll feel like an islander (ships will be reminders)

There’s a hole in the room. You can’t see it on first glance, but if you watch carefully for a while it’s obvious in the way they all move around it: six-foot-one, 208 pounds, more than competent at his job yet impossibly bland in all other respects. It’s a loss they’d expected, a gap they’ve had time to prepare for, and yet they still dance around it as though the act of pretending it isn’t there will make that somehow true.

The new captain, Anders Lee, seems to be more aware of it than most. Every time he walks into the room he makes the same gesture: a brief look towards one specific empty stall, a double take, an unconscious pressing of his hand to his chest, where the captain’s C - whether we can see it or not - is blazoned, where his heart - which might thud painfully within him - beats despite or because of his pride or his anger. Hockey culture preaches strength and silence; there’s no-one he could turn to, if it even occurred to him to try. It’s a heavy burden, to captain an NHL team. It’s a heavier one, to live with such mixed feelings.

Mathew Barzal, rookie no longer, is missing a little more than the veteran players. The hole in the room may be the same size for him, but it carries a very different emotional weight. For him, if he were to vocalise it, the toast would be not to an absent friend or a helpful teammate but to a mentor figure, one willing to pick him up from the airport, to advise him on his professional and personal lives, to rein him in when he’s too much or too fast or too foolish. He is not alone in this, though; his closest teammate, friend, companion, thing that still feels too new and fragile to put a name to? - he feels almost the same way about it. 

What Anthony Beauvillier differs in, however, is the single thing he valued most about the one who used to fill the empty space: discretion. It’s easy enough to find guys who will keep their mouths shut, but ones who can do that and also never give you weird looks, never stare, never try to be too nice, too solicitous, too helpful, never be so goddamned obviously curious? Those are so rare it’s almost impossible to find them.

Casey Cizikas, Cal Clutterbuck, and Matt Martin are in many ways the opposites of these two. For one thing, none of them is young, though they all can remember those heady days of invincibility and terror, the noontimes praying they wouldn’t be sent down and the nights praying they wouldn’t be scratched. For another, none of them is particularly talented, though their time as the ‘best fourth line in hockey’ was just as unforgettable as any rookie season. And then, of course, there’s the fact that they’re not interested in one another in quite the same way. But the most significant is the way in which they differ from each other: their reaction to the absence. For Clutterbuck, this was a mentee-turned-mentor gone to stretch his wings at last; for Cizikas, a trusted friend grown distant with time and space; for Martin, a sense of inadequacy, of ships passing in the night, of feeling the glances of teammates even when they aren’t there and believing they, too, wish the situation was reversed. But these three might be better off than the younger two; they have a plan to cope. They will do the one thing they can do, now: play hockey.

It’s not easy to be a goalie, by all accounts. Thomas Greiss would tell you that it’s even harder to be a backup, whose career hangs on thirty games or fewer each season, whose main job is to operate the bench door, who’s never as important to his teammates as the starter, no matter how hard he tries to get them to like him. But the hardest thing about being a goalie is seeing your goal support walk out the door; too many front office types still use wins as the sole measure of talent, but when you can pitch a shutout and still lose, that just doesn’t seem fair. This is what Greiss sees when he dares to confront the gap - the premature end of his career, going home to the DEL with his head hanging and his pride shaken and his old joints protesting every second of the way.

Robin Lehner, on the other hand, would probably say it’s most difficult to be a starter, with all the pressure and expectation of the entire team hanging on one net, with the lackadaisical defense assuming he can save any shot no matter how badly they fuck up, with all of the blame on him and not them when he can’t. He knows what it is to struggle with that, to have it spark off his inner demons until he doesn’t know what’s real and what’s his brain trying to make him feel wrong again. But Lehner has a leg up on the rest of the team in one respect: he doesn’t seem to know the empty space is there. For him, the Islanders are a fresh start, a place where honesty and openness don’t equal weakness, where he’s just happy to be an NHL starter, happy to be understood.

To come in and coach a team that’s lost its star player is a difficult challenge; to quit a team you coached to a Stanley Cup is almost unheard of. But Barry Trotz has done the latter, and he’s not afraid of the former. In fact, he’s looking forward to it; watching the level of mismanagement that this team has been under for so long was painful at best, and he’s pretty sure he can improve it by leaps and bounds. To him, the hole in the room is a chance to show off just how good he is.

**Author's Note:**

> \- After Detroit was so easy, this one kicked my ass. I was aiming for nature-documentary-but-not-Attenborough-narrator-voice and I think I missed it by a mile.  
> \- Title (slightly edited) from Idlewild's "I Don't Have the Map". It's so grunge! but it was either that or something from "Christmas Island" so it could be worse. The Islanders don't have a goal song with words that would make a good title. This is true of a few more teams, too.


End file.
